It
is a great pleasure for us to welcome you to the website of “With two languages”!
It concerns a “branch” – partner organisation of the information service of
Bilingualism Matters at the University of Edinburgh. The founder and general
director of the service is Professor Antonella Sorace, who is internationally
recognised as one of the world’s most renowned researchers on Bilingualism. In
Greece, the director of the service “With two languages” is Professor Ianthi-Maria
Tsimpli who is a distinguished researcher in language acquisition issues.

Greece as a multilingual society

Although it is very common for a child to speak more than one languages
abroad, in Greece it is only recently that we’ve experienced bilingualism and
multilingualism. In Greece, Âilingualism has mainly two origins: (a) children of
mixed marriages, families in which one of the parents speaks a language other
than Greek and (b) children in immigrant families. A third (numerically smaller)
possibility is the children of Greek parents who, by knowing the benefits of
Bilingualism, send their kids to a bilingual or foreign-language school (e.g.
French, English, German etc. school)

According to recently recorded data, the rate of bilingual children in Greece
exceeds 10% of the overall student population. Nearly in every school classroom,
there are 1-4 bilingual children that speak mainly Albanian, Russian, Turkish,
Romani as their first language/mother tongue. The total number of bilingual
children in 2002-03 was estimated to be 96.526 (2004: 58), while the first
language that these children speak at home covers a very wide range (as also
shown in the graph with the countries of origin of these families) (2004: 29).

The relatively new phenomenon of Bilingualism and the lack of knowledge about
it often lead to prejudices and negative reactions regarding raising a child
with two languages. Unfortunately, bilingualism has often been considered a
state that confuses the child, a state ‘different’ from normal. The goal of the
service “With two languages” is to help everyone by providing them with a wealth
of information regarding the advantages of bilingualism and to encourage the
families, the teachers and institutions to support the bilingual and even
multilingual development of our children.

Bilingualism is good

Research has shown that bilingualism is advantageous for the development of
children. Children who are exposed to different languages can easily perceive
and understand different cultures and people. In this way, they familiriase
themselves with different ways of thinking and understand more easily the
opinion of ‘others’. Also, it has been scientifically proven that bilingual
children tend to perform better on ‘multiple-task’ tests and have better
attention. They are often better at reading and they generally learn foreign
languages more easily. Therefore Bilingualism is not just “Two Languages”, but
much more!

However, bilingualism’s benefits are in risk of being turned into
disadvantages when the Greek school doesn’t manage to deal with heterogeneity in
the classroom. All together, we are trying to achieve a change in the current
conditions, through programs such as Foreigner and Repatriated Students’
Education, Education of the Muslim Minority Children in Thrace, Education of
Romani children and the program ‘Greek Education Abroad’ among others. Besides,
there are state-sponsored bodies (such as the Greek Language Center and the
Institute of Speech Processing) as well as non-profit organisations, such as
“Polydromo: Group for Bilingualism and Multiculturalism in Education and Society”
that systematically work for the investigation of the needs in the domain of
language and the spread of scientific knowledge in the field.

Read more (articles from scientific journals and press release abroad
regarding the benefits of bilingualism)
here.